Greg McIntyre 0:11

Hi, this is Greg McIntyre and attorney Jane Dearwester. How are you, Jane? Doing well. Hello. April Fools. So this April Fools, the best April Fools joke you could play on your family is to not have an estate plan. Don't you agree, Jane?

Jane Dearwester 0:32

Oh, I I don't know. That's that's a dangerous joke.

Probate Delays And Court Control

Greg McIntyre 0:36

It's not a good one. It's not a good one, right? It's not like funny ha ha that's like old tragedy, right? So it's really one of the only jokes. How about it's only a joke until it's real, right? It's it's certainly a joke until it's real. You know, if you pass away without an estate plan or living without certain parts of an estate plan, you will find out really quick what the problems are. So, Jane, I'll take the first one. You know, it's only a joke until it's real. Passing away without an estate plan is you're gonna have probate delays. Um, you're gonna have court control both in the probate process as well as if, heaven forbid, you become incompetent or incapacitated due to accident, illness, or injury during your life, then you may have the court involvement in your life in appointing a guardian for you because your assets are frozen or there's nobody appointed to make your health care decisions. So, really, there could be unnecessary tax consequences and costs because you failed to do that type of tax planning. Um, you really are depriving yourself and your family of being proactive, appointing people to handle your affairs for financial and healthcare during your life, and avoiding the high cost of taxation and probate after you pass away by utilizing other tools like trust to be able to plan to pass your assets outside of probate to beneficiaries. So, really, that's no joking matter. And we're using April Fool's as a little mechanism to talk about this, but that's not a joke. That's not funny, and it really costs money, property, time, pain, and suffering that you don't need to go through. Um, next, I would say real life consequences. Jane, I want to highlight some quick examples of what can happen if you don't have an estate plan in place, let's say during your life.

Living Will Choices And Family Burden

Jane Dearwester 2:46

Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes we say the estate planning documents, like our powers of attorney for general durable power of attorney or financial power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney, are arguably even more important than having a will. Because again, they protect you while you're still alive and potentially at your most vulnerable state when you can't make decisions on your own behalf because of an accident, because of a medical condition, because of cognitive decline. And if you don't sign those documents while you're still competent, it's too late. So instead of paying a few hundred dollars for a couple powers of attorney, you're paying thousands and thousands of dollars for a guardianship, other kinds of court proceedings where the court has to get involved. You've got to hire an attorney, you've got to go through this lengthy process where you can avoid all of that from having those powers of attorney in place. And also the living will. This is a document that's very important, also called the advanced directive. It's applicable only in this very limited state. If you're in a vegetative state and the doctors have said to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, you're probably not going to come out of it. So it behooves you to make a decision for yourself. Do you want to stay plugged in, for lack of a better way to say it? Or is it okay for your family to let you go? And if you don't make that decision, your family members have to make that decision and talk about tough. I mean, that's an impossible decision to make. So if you make it for yourself based on, hey, this is my life, my body, I'm going to go ahead and make this choice, you're saving that. Uh, you're saving your family from having to make very, very difficult decisions. And having those things in place during your lifetime are just vital to your ease of care, to your comfort level, to knowing someone you love and trust is in charge of you and your decisions and your finances instead of you know some stranger appointed by the court. Not saying they won't do a good job, but they're not gonna be, they won't know what you really wanted to do. They're just kind of doing a job and doing the best they can under the circumstances.

Simple Tools Like Ladybird Deeds

Greg McIntyre 5:13

Agreed. And you know, a huge one for me is just the impact of the high cost of long-term care. That is something that can really wipe out your assets. Personally, I'm dealing with that with my family right now, and you know, it can really cost a ton for long-term care. And if you have it planned to protect assets, um, it could put you and your spouse in a really tough position. So, estate planning is so important to protect what you've worked so hard for your entire life. And you you alluded to this, Jane, my third one. Simple fix, low cost fix, big impact. What are what are the things we can do to encourage action and what needs to be done ahead of time so that we can avoid the real impact of not doing of not having an estate plan in place?

Jane Dearwester 6:12

Yeah, what what's making me think of is the Ladybird Deed, which is a great device to protect your real estate that it only applies to real estate, but again, it's a one-time thing that's very powerful that protects your real estate from all kinds of creditors, including um any kind of uh Medicaid claims coming out of long-term care, because upon your death, it immediately passes your real estate to whoever you designate outside of probate. It doesn't trigger the look back periods for long-term care considerations. So that's what comes to mind for me as another something, again, that you can do while you're alive to protect your real estate assets.

Probate Avoidance And Free Consult Offer

Greg McIntyre 6:55

Absolutely. And just the powers of attorney are so impactful and important too, to avoid guardianship, general durable power of attorney for financial and legal purposes, healthcare power of attorney, um, to appoint the right person that you want to handle your health care. And then probate avoidance, um, you utilizing, as Jane suggested, ladybird deeds and trust, those are very powerful. And really ultimately, when compared with the cost of guardianship and probate or losing your assets to the high cost of long-term care, your home, your retirement, you're talking about uh an amazing return on your investment up front for estate planning. So thank you, Jane, for talking about this important subject. I hope everybody has a great April out there, and uh we'll bring you more great information in our Elder Law reports. I'm Greg McIntyre, Jane Dearwester, fellow attorney, great attorney with our firm. And um I would offer, and our firm would offer a free consult to sit down with you and your family to talk about putting an estate plan in place, what that might look like. Um, you can take advantage of that by calling 1-888-999-6600, or by scheduling directly on our website at MC Elder MCelderlaw.com. That's M as in Mike, C as in Charlie, Elderlaw.com slash scheduling. Thank you. Thanks, Jane. Thanks.